


A Vagabond

by vassalady



Category: Captain America (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, POV Female Character, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5811340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vassalady/pseuds/vassalady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Priscilla is a failed assassin. Maybe she can try being a hero again. It will take her time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Vagabond

Priscilla was not a killer. She knew that now. Killing meant taking people away from loved ones. Like her brother had been taken from her.

It wasn’t fair, and she didn’t get it. Why did people have to kill others? What was the point? Yes, there were terrible people out there, but why were they terrible? Why was it a sick cycle of violence and pain?

Holding that guy in the pastor’s basement had been terrible. USAgent was not a good man. Priscilla knew that. But she wasn’t a good woman either, not really. She had wanted to become a killer. She had wanted to become an instrument of vengeance and utterly destroy those who had killed her brother and anyone else who hurt others.

And in turn, she would hurt people, too, innocent people who hadn’t done a thing.

Priscilla was naive. She knew that, too. How stupid she was for thinking she could be a real hero, as if the right training while tagging along with her boyfriend would make her one.

Well, she’d gotten the training in the end, but the heroism hadn’t come.

Guess it took a little more than a few skills to be a hero for people. People like her anyway, people who weren’t really good at all.

And then there were the people who were somehow heroes despite all that. That left a sour taste in her mouth.

Priscilla went home. She didn’t know what else to do. She worked a couple part-time jobs that didn’t pay very well. She spent a lot of her free time at the gym. It didn’t feel good to work herself to exhaustion, but it was something to do anyway. Made her tired enough she didn’t think.

Home didn’t really work out in the end. She threw her stuff together, not really paying attention to what clothes she took, and moved out. She managed to dodge needing roommates by settling for a crummy studio. 

It suited her at least. Priscilla Lyons, permanent part-timer and failed vigilante.

Failed superhero, too, but that didn’t count so much since she never had really been one.

She had the costume, still. She grabbed it on accident and found it while unpacking. A striped leotard and a blue cropped tank. Why the hell did she even keep this?

She threw out the tank top, but kept the leotard. She wasn’t sure why, but she threw on some leggings over it and then a jean jacket. It wasn’t bad for a regular outfit, but not really superhero material.

But for the first time in a long time, Priscilla felt excited.

It wasn’t long before she was researching pants and jackets for their practicality. She looked into guns, too, but it reminded her too much of that moment in the apartment. The moment she found out what kind of woman she was.

There were other options though. Things she could use that would incapacitate but not kill.

Priscilla could do it, in theory.

But Priscilla wasn’t a killer, and she wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t anything but a screw-up who knew how to take down a man twice her size but didn’t have the guts to do it. 

She used to not know that, either. She didn’t know how to be a hero, and she was never going to use her skills to kill. Every sensible part of her told her that was that, she should find a real, full time job and get on with her life. That was the sensible thing.

But there was a part of her that thought maybe she could learn. Like her skills, she could learn how to be a hero. 

Vagabond would live again.


End file.
